Cars From The Good New Days

Anyone who is heard to whine and pine for the automotive good old days ought to have Brock Yates’s sidebar to his wonderful article “Duesenberg” in the July/August issue permanently embossed on his forehead so he can read it every morning when he looks in the mirror to shave. Out in the real world, among people, stoplights, curves in the road, and things to run into, an old car is a beast. This applies regardless of how powerful it may be, or how well crafted, or where made, or by whom. It becomes graphically apparent to me anytime I fire up my 1966 Olds 98 or think back to all the knuckles I busted bolting after-market chassis hardware onto my 1969 Ford Mustang in order to make it corner and stop about as well as my 1992 Pontiac Sunbird does right out of the box.

Of course they don’t make them the way they used to. In every area of performance that matters today—efficiency, safety, maneuverability, emissions—they make them better than ever before. Yates is right. Anybody who wants to drive one of these old monsters faster than a Fourth of July parade has either a faulty memory or a death wish.